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In the never-ending struggle to increase your blog readership, generating traffic to your blog is only half the battle. The other half involves retention of traffic, or better yet, to get these visitors to subscribe to your blog. I was inspired after reading Moshin’s article to write a post on what makes me, as a reader, subscribe to a particular blog. In the style of Work n Play, I have given this topic a personal spin by providing five requirements that would make ME subscribe to YOUR blog.

1. Eye Candy

Everyone (males and females) like eye candy. Whether it’s Jessica Alba’s beautiful smile, Brad Pitt’s handsome mug, or a well designed webpage, we all enjoy looking at nice things. Simplicity, well coordinated color schemes, innovative designs, elegant font types . . . they all come together to present a powerful first impression to a new visitor. If your site has great content, but doesn’t appeal to the eye, you have already lost the battle! Here are two examples of nicely designed sites (besides the one that you are currently looking at)

Smashing Magazine
psdtuts

For you new bloggers, I know it can be difficult to find an excellent Wordpress theme for free, but there are certainly some decent themes out there. The only problem is that those themes are probably being used by other bloggers as well. But you always have the ability to customize your theme and fiddle with the CSS to differentiate yourself. And if you become somewhat successful, you can ask John to help design your Wordpress theme.

2. Advertisements

The bane of all blogs and websites (if not done in good taste). I refuse to subscribe to any blog that does an egregious job incorporating their ads. If you have ads, it’s a good idea to place them onto your blog strategically so as to not interfere with the visitor’s viewing experience. Contrary to popular advertising opinion, I think a good ad is one that is NOT noticed by the reader. Let’s face it, no one really likes to look at ads, but it’s a necessary evil. So if you’re going to have them on your blog, at least put them in tastefully. Here are some good examples of websites incorporating ads into their website smartly,

Pixel2life
Freelance Switch (bears a striking resemblance to a certain blog)

3. Content

Eye candy is great, but most readers are sophisticated enough to look underneath the glamour. When I visit a blog for the first time, I like to explore the recent posts and the popular posts to see if I’m interested in what the blog has to offer. If these posts are located on the sidebar, that just makes my job as a reader that much easier. Catchy titles, informative posts, and up to date news are three things I look for. But most importantly, regular updates are essential!

4. Style

Some people have a way with words, while others . . . don’t. You can have the best content in the world, but the way you present it can make or break your blog. The writers of the blogs that I subscribe do a great job presenting their material. The prose is graceful and lucid, and images are appropriately used to supplement the text. There are no grammatical errors or misspelled words. It doesn’t take much effort for me to read the material as it just flows naturally. Some people have the inherent ability to write like this, but I suspect that many people have to go through many iterations of editing to achieve this fluidity. This shows me that the blogger takes pride in his/her work.

5. Placement of the RSS icon

Last, and least (in my opinion), is the placement of the RSS icon(s). Some bloggers like to place special emphasis on the optimal placement of the RSS icon, but I personally think that this is the last thing you should worry about. In my opinion, it is sufficient to have the RSS icon on the top right of your page and at the end of each post. If you have the first four points covered, I will search your site for that RSS icon regardless of where it is located. And even if you don’t have one, I will manually add you into my Google Reader!

Hope you enjoyed reading this post. Since this is my first post here at Work n Play I would like to introduce myself,

My name is Quan Quach ( turtie ) and I’m currently working as a Systems Engineer. The Work n Play site was one of the first that I found when I googled “how to generate web traffic”. This site has helped me tremendously in jumpstarting my blogging career, so when Ritu asked me to write a guest post, I simply could not refuse.

I have two projects that I am currently working on. The main project is a tutorial site with a focus on Matlab that targets both professional and student engineers. As a side project, I have my own blog which I started just a couple of weeks ago. It started off without much of a focus, but now it is dedicated to helping bloggers realize their blogging potential.

Share your thoughts via comments on what you think of this article as a whole or the points listed in general.

Cheers!

Tags: Blogging, RSS Feed //